Laws related to plastic straws are like the only environmental legislation that’s been passed recently (aside from the Inflation Reduction Act’s various environmental policies which hell yeah) which is what they’re getting at. Democrats are only able to pass the tiniest of laws to reduce environmental impact and Republicans are out here actively trying to genocide queer and brown people.
If democrats were just 20% as aggressive as republicans at actually passing policy to advance their agendas this country would be in a far different place. There’s a reason prominent democratic representatives have been talking about how much their constituents are demanding they actually take action and do something, it’s because they haven’t been doing much for the last 20+ years.
The Fight For 15 has been going on so long that the $15 minimum wage they’ve been demanding is now worth the same as the current federal minimum wage ($7.25/hr) was when The Fight For 15 first started! The fact that they couldn’t even raise the federal minimum wage to match inflation when they had a majority in all branches of government 5 years ago speaks volumes
If we had politicians in power who actually cared about the environment, we’d have personal vehicle weight limits, all EV new car sales, remote work incentives, ebike and public transit incentives, solar panels on every roof, single use plastic ban, strict emissions limits for industries, a carbon trading system to further financially encourage lower carbon business practices, strict ewaste controls to route working systems back into service that otherwise get junked, etc. Etc. instead all we have is gestures at everything
Just to point out tho, liberals have had a trifecta for two 2-year periods out of the last 25, while I do think they could have been a lot more aggressive during that time (especially “let’s compromise on that Obama”) but it’s not like they’ve had 12 years of real control and did nothing.
That is however assuming they need a trifecta to pass legislation, and that they can only pass effective climate legislation at the federal level. Again this is something republicans have mastered, they take every boring race at every state they can and dig in and try to fuck shit up to advance their shitty agenda. Some states and cities have been relatively aggressive about this, such as California, Oregon and New York, but ultimately they could go further
Democrats aren’t dreaming big. They aren’t rallying around a noble but difficult to achieve cause like Republicans rallied around banning abortion for the last half century. Like I get it, they also aren’t doing as much blatant saying one thing publicly then passing legislation to do the opposite, and their causes aren’t about making everything more expensive for consumers and enriching large businesses, but god damnit I want to see people start trying to actually make a better world and dream big and make big changes to achieve that
They kind of did need a trifecta because the GOP made their #1 priority to stop literally everything Dems wanted to do, whether they agreed with it or not.
What do you call a “victory” that took a lot of political capital and then accomplished basically nothing?
What did the straw ban do? It’s certainly not reducing waste on its own in any significant way; if every single plastic straw was banned worldwide, its impact would still be tiny in comparison to the overall problem. There was a argument that it would get people to start thinking about how much waste is in their lives. That was six or seven years ago. None of that has come to pass, and I’d argue that it was obviously speculative even before anything took effect.
You can’t change anything that matters with this nickel and dime policy shit. It is not even worth the effort to push it.
Laws related to plastic straws are like the only environmental legislation that’s been passed recently (aside from the Inflation Reduction Act’s various environmental policies which hell yeah) which is what they’re getting at. Democrats are only able to pass the tiniest of laws to reduce environmental impact and Republicans are out here actively trying to genocide queer and brown people.
If democrats were just 20% as aggressive as republicans at actually passing policy to advance their agendas this country would be in a far different place. There’s a reason prominent democratic representatives have been talking about how much their constituents are demanding they actually take action and do something, it’s because they haven’t been doing much for the last 20+ years.
The Fight For 15 has been going on so long that the $15 minimum wage they’ve been demanding is now worth the same as the current federal minimum wage ($7.25/hr) was when The Fight For 15 first started! The fact that they couldn’t even raise the federal minimum wage to match inflation when they had a majority in all branches of government 5 years ago speaks volumes
If we had politicians in power who actually cared about the environment, we’d have personal vehicle weight limits, all EV new car sales, remote work incentives, ebike and public transit incentives, solar panels on every roof, single use plastic ban, strict emissions limits for industries, a carbon trading system to further financially encourage lower carbon business practices, strict ewaste controls to route working systems back into service that otherwise get junked, etc. Etc. instead all we have is gestures at everything
Just to point out tho, liberals have had a trifecta for two 2-year periods out of the last 25, while I do think they could have been a lot more aggressive during that time (especially “let’s compromise on that Obama”) but it’s not like they’ve had 12 years of real control and did nothing.
That is however assuming they need a trifecta to pass legislation, and that they can only pass effective climate legislation at the federal level. Again this is something republicans have mastered, they take every boring race at every state they can and dig in and try to fuck shit up to advance their shitty agenda. Some states and cities have been relatively aggressive about this, such as California, Oregon and New York, but ultimately they could go further
Democrats aren’t dreaming big. They aren’t rallying around a noble but difficult to achieve cause like Republicans rallied around banning abortion for the last half century. Like I get it, they also aren’t doing as much blatant saying one thing publicly then passing legislation to do the opposite, and their causes aren’t about making everything more expensive for consumers and enriching large businesses, but god damnit I want to see people start trying to actually make a better world and dream big and make big changes to achieve that
They kind of did need a trifecta because the GOP made their #1 priority to stop literally everything Dems wanted to do, whether they agreed with it or not.
That’s true, I kinda blocked that period out of my memory
How often did Republicans get a trifecta in the same time period? How does their policy agenda successes compare?
The right took every small victory they can get and used that momentum to catapult to the next until there was enough momentum to make large changes.
The left had lots of victory’s that they then spent the following weeks arguing why those were actually losses
What do you call a “victory” that took a lot of political capital and then accomplished basically nothing?
What did the straw ban do? It’s certainly not reducing waste on its own in any significant way; if every single plastic straw was banned worldwide, its impact would still be tiny in comparison to the overall problem. There was a argument that it would get people to start thinking about how much waste is in their lives. That was six or seven years ago. None of that has come to pass, and I’d argue that it was obviously speculative even before anything took effect.
You can’t change anything that matters with this nickel and dime policy shit. It is not even worth the effort to push it.